DRaWR: Discriminative Random Walk with Restart

We present DRaWR, a network-based method for ranking genes or
properties related to a given gene set. Such related genes or properties are
identified from among the nodes of a large, heterogeneous network of biological
information. Our method involves a random walk with restarts, performed on
an initial network with multiple node and edge types, preserving more of the
original, specific property information than current methods that operate
on homogeneous networks. In this first stage of our algorithm, we find the
properties that are the most relevant to the given gene set and extract a
subnetwork of the original network, comprising only the relevant properties. We
then rerank genes by their similarity to the given gene set, based on a second
random walk with restarts, performed on the above subnetwork.